NewsontheLawyersandLegalProfessionalsofTexas

Tag Archives: small town

I have lived in Houston almost my entire life and have always considered myself an urbanite. My wife and I love the trappings of the city—musicals, museums, and dim sum, to name a few. But in June I moved to San Angelo, with a population of about 100,700, and you cannot convince me to go … Continue Reading

Legal groups across Texas have created innovative ways for lawyers to help fill the access to justice gap in rural areas. “There are fewer lawyers in rural communities to help meet the need on a pro bono basis,” said Trish McAllister, executive director of the Texas Access to Justice Commission. “Coupled with geographic challenges, people … Continue Reading

Editor’s Note: This article coincides with the Texas Bar Journal’s feature story on law practices in small towns and rural communities, published in the July 2015 issue. Statistics on Texas lawyers reveal some interesting trends of the dispersal of the legal workforce. The state has a ratio of one attorney for every 312 citizens, and … Continue Reading

Roy B. Ferguson and his attorney wife, Pene, started their careers in Houston, but in 1999, they moved almost 600 miles to one of the state’s least-populated regions, a place with high-desert vistas of the Davis Mountains and Big Bend where both of them have family roots. Their law office in Marfa, which they opened … Continue Reading

Twenty years ago, Paul Looney, 60, moved from Houston to the nearby town of Bellville to raise his daughter. He spent years commuting to the city every day to practice law but eventually realized there were opportunities in neighboring Hempstead, population about 5,700. Looney has been a happy and successful small-town attorney ever since. He … Continue Reading

When Natalie Cobb Koehler was a student at South Texas College of Law in Houston, she decided that she would move back home to practice law. Koehler and her family now live on an oak- and cedar-covered ranch in Cranfills Gap in Central Texas, where her kids show animals in 4H and her husband co-stars … Continue Reading

H.P. “Mike” Berkley, 65, is a solo practitioner outside Forestburg, a community near the Texas-Oklahoma border with a population of about 250. He went to Southern Methodist University School of Law and practiced in Dallas until moving to the country about 25 years ago. Berkley talks about marrying the town vet, being a content attorney … Continue Reading

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About The Texas Bar

In 1882, hundreds of judges and lawyers gathered in Galveston to establish the Texas Bar Association, a volunteer organization. Half a century later, seeking to ensure that lawyers maintain the highest ethical standards, the association proposed legislation that would unify the bar and provide more stringent controls over standards of practice. The Texas Legislature passed the State Bar Act in 1939, mandating that all attorneys licensed to practice law in Texas belong to the State Bar of Texas.